Friday, March 25, 2016

Today is Good Friday, the day Christians around the world observe what they believe to be the central fact of history: that God's son, sent to live among us, willingly offered himself as a sacrifice for the transgressions of all mankind. In order to vicariously atone for mankind's sins, Christ allowed himself to be subjected to trumped-up charges, a wrongful conviction, and an unjust death penalty. He was brought before the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate, who promptly declared him innocent. But to appease the angry mob, Pilate ordered Christ to be flogged. When that wasn't enough for them, Pilate allowed Christ to be crucified.

Jesus is the most famous wrongly accused and wrongly convicted person in history, and his death holds lessons for modern men and women.

The sacrifice of innocents to answer a public outcry, fomented by persons with a political agenda, is a phenomenon likely as old as civilization, and it still happens today. Prof. Mark A Godsey of the Innocence Project said that "the risk of wrongful conviction is the highest when there’s public outcry. Most of the exonerations and wrongful convictions have occurred in rape cases."

It is well to remember that with Jesus, the mob used the state to carry out its vile deed on Good Friday. God allowed his son to be tried, convicted, and executed by the state in order to make a critical point. Being subjected to a vile deed by individuals acting on their own would not have manifested the community's rejection of the Messiah. The Divine Plan recognized that, all other things being equal, misconduct by the state in punishing an innocent is qualitatively different from, and more significant than, misconduct by miscreants acting on their own. That, of course, is one of the bases for celebrated English jurist William Blackstone's assertion that it is better that ten guilty men escape punishment than that one innocent suffer at the hands of the state.

Just as Christians believe that all of us ultimately bear responsibility for Christ's death, all of us, figuratively speaking, have blood on our hands for the mistreatment of the modern day wrongly accused. We are the mob shouting "Crucify him!" and leading an innocent man to Golgotha.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The Washington Post reports that the president of Emory University in Atlanta had to meet with 40 to 50 students who were "concerned and frightened" about something that happened on campus.

A terrorist attack? An outbreak of swine flu?

Nope. Someone wrote “Trump 2016” in chalk on campus sidewalks and some buildings.

I'm not making that up. According to the Washington Post: "Jim Wagner, president of the Atlanta university, wrote Tuesday that the students viewed the messages as intimidation, and they voiced 'genuine concern and pain' as a result."

Read it again: "Genuine concern and pain." The Onion might as well shut down--this is more absurd than anything its writers could possibly conjure up.

College has become a place where callow minds march in lockstep to the orthodoxy of their moral superiors, where dissent and critical thinking is not tolerated if they deviate from a far left world view.

When the post-millennials start to run things, folks, the Republic is doomed. In this instance, even calling these children--this hysterical dross--"special snowflakes" isn't fair to real snowflakes, which are sturdier and have far more substance than these dopes.

And sure enough, the president of the University kowtowed to the tyranny of nitwits. The students chanted, “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” shortly before President Wagner agreed to meet with them. Wagner then wrote a letter acknowledging that he heard their pain about the nefarious chalk. Writing "Trump 2016" sends "a message about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.”

Trump = bad; people who don't like Trump = good. Got it.

We're finished, folks. They couldn't get any stupider or more pathetic if they tried. And, no, I'm not a Trump supporter.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

For the better part of six decades, the Castro brothers in Cuba have run a totalitarian, repressive, and murderous regime that has sponsored state terrorism and that is the architect of a long list of human rights atrocities. See, e.g., here.

Yesterday, President Obama, seen in the photo above posing in front of the image of Che Guevara, met with younger Castro brother and present Cuban dictator Raul.

Raul Castro lectured President Obama that Cuba honors human rights but the U.S. doesn't. Of special interest is that Castro parroted the U.S. far left's mantras about the gender wage gap. Castro said this:

We have many other rights — a right to health, the right to education. Do you — and this is my last example that I will mention. Do you think that for equal work, men get better pay than women just for the fact of being women? Well in Cuba, women get same pay for same work.

It is not difficult to see why Castro thinks this about the U.S. The far left in this country routinely preaches that women are paid 77 cents for every dollar men earn for doing identical work. This, of course, is dishonest on a multitude of levels. It is a gross exaggeration of the actual gender wage gap, and to the extent it suggests the small wage gap that actually exists is clearly attributable to discrimination, it is a bald-faced lie.

How did Obama respond? Predictably:

President Castro also addressed what he views as shortcomings in the United States around basic needs for people and poverty and inequality and race relations, and we welcome that constructive dialogue as well because we believe that when we share our deepest beliefs and ideas with an attitude of mutual respect that we can both learn and make the lives of our people better.

We've seen this sort of response many times. The fact that the leader of the most civilized and most just nation in the history of the world thinks the U.S. can have "constructive dialogue" in a spirit of "mutual respect" with a murderous thug tells us everything we need to know about our present administration's values, moral compass, and common sense. Is it any wonder this administration has jettisoned due process for college students accused of sexual misconduct in fealty to group identity politics?

Please note, Senator Benie Sanders, socialist presidential candidate and darling of the generation of nitwits on the left, is even worse--he's spoken glowingly about Cuba. Enough said.

Friday, March 18, 2016

This is a tale of two major rape hoaxes reported by two major media outlets, and why the reactions to them was so different.

In the first, a predominantly white fraternity at a major university was singled out in connection with a made-up gang rape. Most of our readers are familiar with this story.

In the second, a group of unspecified Muslim men were falsely accused of violently raping a nurse.

Both stories quickly unraveled to reveal catastrophic journalistic lapses. But defenders of one of the imaginary victims stuck by their hero while defenders of the other immediately jumped ship. The unspecified falsely accused men in one story were treated as victims while the falsely accused men in the other story were not.

You can easily guess which story was which. Let's recap the first story--which is well-known to our readers--before telling you about the second.

In 2014, "journalist" Sabrina Rubin Erdely wrote a sensationally reckless Rolling Stone article about a gang rape of a woman called "Jackie" that never really happened on the campus of the University of Virginia. The alleged rape was violent and callous:

"Grab its motherfucking leg"' she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped. She remembers every moment of the next three hours of agony, during which, she says, seven men took turns raping her, while two more – her date, Drew, and another man – gave instruction and encouragement.

The tale was immediately believed by almost everyone--#IStandWithJackie resonated on campus and beyond to much of America. Fraternities were suspended. Gender extremists masquerading as journalists unflinchingly demonized fraternities as campus rape pits, parroted 1970s radical feminist mantras about automatically believing women. and preached that due process for college men accused of rape is a luxury college women can't afford.

When the story started to unravel, they had no hesitation sticking by "Jackie"and insisting that any blame should fall squarely on Rolling Stone for failing to jump through pro forma journalistic hoops. Few acknowledged that the victims of the story--the men of the unfairly maligned fraternity--were actually victims. Jezebel's Anna Merlan called wrote a column that branded writer Robby Soave an "idiot" in the headline for daring to question "Jackie's" story. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said that "Jackie" ought to be beyond criticism: "Victim blaming or shining the spotlight on her for coming forward is not the right approach." On CNN, a legal analyst named Sunny Hostin clucked: ". . . the suggestion that ["Jackie"] just sort of made this entire thing up flies in the face of statistics." A writer for a college newspaper decried criticisms of "the testimony of a traumatized victim who is trying to live with the effects of her trauma." And leave it to Jessica Valenti to pen a thing called this: "Inconsistencies in Jackie's story do not mean that she wasn't raped at UVA." The inanity speaks for itself.

Fast forward to today. Australia has just experienced a similar journalistic debacle about a rape that never happened. On February 21, 2016, a seasoned newspaper writer named Paul Sheehan reported an alleged sexual assault of a woman who went by her middle name of Louise. She told Sheehan she had fallen asleep in her car near a cathedral and awoke to a man pulling her leg before she was punched in the face. Then, she claimed, she was beaten and raped by six men of Middle Eastern appearance before several homeless men found her. She claimed she suffered a broken jaw, 79 fractures, a broken ankle, a broken back vertebrae and broken nose.

It didn't take long for this story to unravel, as most of them do. Only this time, the reaction was much different than the Rolling Stone falsehood because the victims of the false rape claim weren't "privileged" white men. There was no hand-wringing trying to salvage Louise's sordid tale, nor was there any question that the victims of the false claim, Muslim men, were actually victims because they'd been unfairly stigmatized.

The newspaper quickly apologized: "In a column published on February 21 headlined The story of Louise: the hidden scale of the rape epidemic in Sydney, Fairfax Media reported the details of an alleged sexual assault. A subsequent column published below acknowledged key elements of the original story were unable to be substantiated. The original story included aspersions against the Middle Eastern community and raised untested allegations of inaction against the NSW Police. Fairfax Media sincerely regrets the hurt and distress the reports caused to these groups, and our readers, and unreservedly apologises." The writer acknowledged that his story wronged Muslims: "In the story recounted to me by Louise, she made insulting references to rapes committed by Middle Eastern men. I had wrongly amplified this insult by including her words in the column."

The story was used to spark a national dialogue about how Muslim men are unfairly stigmatized. The writer was branded a reckless journalist with a supposed racial animus and a history of writing things trashing Islam and Muslims. Academic Randa Abdel-Fattah decried the “racialised discourse” that stigmatizes Muslim men as criminals. “According to Sheehan … sexual assault is foreclosed as a Muslim/Middle Eastern crime,” she wrote. Further:

The thread that Sheehan uses to stitch together his story is a racist, matter-of-fact, common doxa that constructs a taken-for-granted figure of the Muslim/Middle Eastern/brown man as rapist. This figure reifies a racialised discourse that stigmatises and maligns Muslim men wholesale via the rhetoric of criminalisation.

And it works. Because these have become the acceptable terms of how the media presents any story connected (even wrongly) to Muslims. And they are acceptable to a readership that largely takes their truth value for granted.Advertisement

The production of this image of the Muslim man to be feared depends on what Goldsmiths' academic Sara Ahmed calls ‘past histories of association’. The label rapist becomes a metonym that slides between words, remakes connections and stirs a history of Islamophobic narratives.. . . .When it comes to Muslims, professional practice, critical faculties, editorial checks and journalistic integrity are suspended.

If only you could sit in a room with . . . all the . . . Muslim women and men who are devastated every time you write about Muslims.

If you were really sorry, you'd apologise to them, and to us.

Another writer explained the problem: "One of the reasons we need to be wary of adding weight to Islamophobia is because it is on the rise: Islamophobic attacks spike after news breaks of Islamic extremist terrorism."

This blog was pointed out that rape lies often include a "scary" black or Hispanic male suspect in an attempt to lend plausibility to the fabrication. Add Muslims to the list. In 2011, a Brooklyn "nun" from a fringe Christian sect falsely claimed "that she was choked and raped by a black man." The New York Daily News reported that black men in the neighborhood were angered, but not surprised. According to the Daily News: "Cops even released a sketch of the phantom suspect and pleaded for the public to help catch him. After more questioning, [the accuser] admitted she concocted the assault to cover up her sexual shenanigans with a bodega worker." The men in the neighborhood were "pissed," as one man put it. "I don't know why they must accuse falsely like that. I think it must be prejudice," said a 56-year-old advertising worker who lived across from the house where the "nun" lived.

In 2010, WABC weather forecaster Heidi Jones invented a Hispanic man as her attacker. Many expressed outrage on behalf of the Hispanic community.

A rape lie is all the more despicable when it is seasoned with racial animus because it stokes awful stereotypes. But a rape lie is sufficiently despicable without racial animus to warrant our outrage. Sadly, for too many commentators in the mainstream media and for practically all who write for progressive Internet news outlets, if the particular rape claim doesn't present a morality play about a perceived victim group--and young white men don't qualify--the injustice isn't treated as an injustice.

The real lessons from both the "Jackie" and "Louise" disasters and from every other high-profile false rape claim is that it is never right to rush to judgment and treat an accusation as tantamount to a conviction even where the accuser "seems" credible. It is both journalistic malpractice and morally grotesque to refuse to concede even the possibility that there might be another side to the story. And men who belong to minority communities are often treated unfairly, but, yes, white men can be victims, too, even when they belong to fraternities.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

A 16-year-old boy had consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl. She told her parents, who objected to the boy, and they had him taken into state custody and charged with statutory rape. He's out on bail, awaiting another court date. She was never taken into custody, because under the applicable law, she did not commit a crime.

It happened in Ireland where the age of consent for both males and females is 17, and boys under that age can be prosecuted for statutory rape but girls can't. The applicable statute provides: "A female child under the age of 17 years shall not be guilty of an offence under this Act by reason only of her engaging in an act of sexual intercourse."

The judge said this about the young male "criminal": "Someone has to guide him and be firm, someone has to give him love. His parents have let him down."

Notice that no one has to "guide" the girl, or be "firm" with her--and her parents did not let her down. Only the boy requires such assistance, and he didexactly what she did. He is guilty by reason of penis.

Throughout the civilized world, laws that favor males--either as written or as applied--are condemned as grossly unjust. But when the genders are reversed, we often hear little outcry. For example, in the U.S., do you know the penalties when teenage men fail to register with selective service? Nothing to see here, the feminists tell us, move along! You see, males can't be victims even when they are.

This Irish case is reminiscent of the awful Milton Academy case out of Massachusetts several years ago. A 15-year-old girl engaged in group sex with five teenage boys in the boys’ locker room. They were 16. The boys, and only the boys, were expelled and charged with statutory rape, and the court ordered the boys to publicly apologize to the girl and her family, and to do community service.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the famous Harvard law professor and criminal defense lawyer, had a daughter who attended Milton Academy. Prof. Dershowitz said it plainly: "This represents the most senseless use of prosecutorial discretion I’ve seen in a long time.” He added: ”The idea that these youngsters should be branded rapists and the girl should be labeled a victim is preposterous.”

Read on only if you want to get your blood boiling.

The 16-year-old boys read their sickening apologies to the girl and her family, in open court, as part of their plea bargain. One boy read this: "Not a day has passed since the incident that I don’t wish I had shown more respect for you, myself, and everyone involved. I understand that by taking part I put myself in a very dangerous situation with consequences none of us had dreamed of.”

Another boy read this: ”Every day I am sorry, so sorry, for what happened. And every day I think of how hurt you must be and how upset your family must be. More than anything in the world I wish that I could turn back the clock. . . . All I can do at this point is truly and sincerely apologize for my actions and wish you happiness.”

The girl's family sat there stony-faced as the boys were publicly humiliated. They got what they deserved . . . because they were born male.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

The false rape news story, below, underscores this reality: who the hell cares how often it happens, the fact that it happens too often--it happens time and time again--is enough to make false rape reporting a serious social pathology.

The story below has all the earmarks of stories we've been writing about here for years: a woman lies that she was raped to cover up a consensual affair. Prof. Eugene Kanin's much unfairly maligned false rape study said this is the most common reason for false rape claims. Even feminist gadfly Amanda Marcotte once wrote that "the idea that it's shameful to just have sex because you want to" is "the reason that you have false rape accusations in the first place."

Beyond that, the only reason the woman in the story below recanted was because the guy had videotaped the encounter. What did wrongly accused men do before videos?

How many stories like this must we report--yet still we are forced to endure the sexual grievance cartel trivializing the importance of due process for young men accused of sexual assault. And they justify their hostility to fairness by insisting that women essentially never don't lie about rape.

It happens, and it happens too often. And that's why we need to be vigilant in insisting that men and boys accused of sexual assault be afforded due process.

Girlfriend charged with perjury, filing false report

FARMINGTON – A 38-year-old Shiprock woman is accused of perjury on allegations she falsely accused her boyfriend of rape. The boyfriend told detectives he was able to disprove the allegations because he videotaped the encounter, according to a police report.

Dana Woodis was charged Thursday in Farmington Magistrate Court with perjury — a fourth-degree felony — malicious criminal prosecution and making a false report, both misdemeanors.

She has not retained an attorney, according to court records. Woodis is set to make an initial court appearance on March 28.

Farmington police detectives interviewed Woodis on Jan. 26 at the Farmington Police Department after she allegedly reported she was raped by her boyfriend, Malcolm Thompson, at his residence on Alpine Avenue in Farmington, according to the police report. Woodis reported the rape at the department with her ex-husband, the report states.

Woodis told detectives she met up with Thompson, whom she had known for approximately a month, on the night of Jan. 25, and they kissed, but she told him she was not ready to have sex with him.

Woodis then claimed Thompson stripped her pants off and sexually penetrated her against her will, according to the complaint. She said she told him to stop, but he choked her and slapped her face, the complaint states. Detectives noted in the report Woodis did not have any markings on her face or throat, the report states.

Thompson told detectives the sex was consensual, but Woodis became upset when he told her afterward he was not ready for a relationship, according to the report.

During the investigation, Thompson further told police he filmed the entire sexual encounter with Woodis, the report states.

Detectives told Woodis about the videotape, and she then allegedly backtracked and said the sex was consensual, according to the report. Woodis said she lied because she did not want her ex-husband to know she was having sex with Thompson, the report states.

San Juan County Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin O'Brien said the public should be aware that false rape reports are not typical, despite the charges against Woodis.

"You don't want something like this to have a chilling effect or to make a jury believe that false reports are common, but they do happen," O'Brien said.

The FBI stated in its Uniform Crime Report in 1996 that approximately 8 percent of rape claims were determined to be false or baseless after further investigation.

[The accused] must come forward with proof of an affirmative verbal response that is credible in an environment in which there are seldom, if any, witnesses to an activity which requires exposing each party’s most private body parts. Absent the tape recording of a verbal consent or other independent means to demonstrate that consent was given, the ability of an accused to prove the complaining party’s consent strains credulity and is illusory.

Exactly how are innocent college men supposed to prove consent? A co-author of California's law, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, said this: “Your guess is as good as mine." That comment is as chilling as it is telling.

The sexual grievance cartel: no concern about innocent college men

When people of goodwill raise concerns about the effect of "affirmative consent" laws on innocent college men, the sexual grievance cartel becomes indignant. Attorney Shelley Dempsey recently testified against Connecticut's proposed "yes means yes" bill and explained that it undermines the fundamental presumption of innocence. This sparked a "heated exchange" with one of sponsors of the bill, Sen. Mae Flexer. Flexer didn't bother to refute Dempsey's argument that the proposed law would flip the "presumption of innocence" but instead played the "rape epidemic" card. She argued that "statistics show one of every five women will be a sexual assault victim on campus." Her implication was that because rape is a problem, we shouldn't worry about the wrongly accused, who are necessary collateral damage in the far more important war on rape.

Attorney Dempsey challenged Flexer's premise by correctly refuting her statistics. Dempsey explained that, in fact, data from the U.S. Department of Justice shows the real number is 6.1 students per 1,000.

Flexer responded with indignation that Dempsey would dare to cite actual statistics to correct Flexer's fabricated statistics. Flexer accused Dempsey of "reframing the debate in a way that was not conducive to solving the urgent problem of college sexual assault." Flexner added: “It’s frustrating to be debating the criminal justice statistics on this issue when everyone in this room can recognize that there are clearly far too many young women in this state and across the country that are sexually assaulted on our college campuses.”

Indignation is a new approach for Flexer in responding to queries about "affirmative consent." Last year, speaking at a panel discussion at Yale, Flexer claimed that it is a "false criticism" to maintain that affirmative consent presumes guilt in an accused. Yale's Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd chimed in, explaining that Yale still begins with a presumption of innocence but simply has shifted the question from “was there a refusal” to “was there agreement.”

Excuse me while I go bang my head against a wall. When you force an accused student to prove there was an agreement, you are presuming guilt based on an accusation. ". . . the rule about burden of proof requires the prosecution by evidence to convince the jury of the accused's guilt . . . ." Taylor v. Kentucky, 436 U.S. 478, 485, 98 S. Ct. 1930, 1934, 56 L. Ed. 2d 468, 475, 1978 U.S. LEXIS 95, *12-13 (U.S. 1978). So, no, it is not a "false criticism" to claim that "affirmative consent" flips the presumption of innocence on its head.

______________

This is about what we should expect from the folks who dominate the public discourse on sexual assault--and don't give a damn about your son. Jaclyn Friedman, editor of the book “Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape,” explained on PBS why "affirmative consent" is a good law:

Q: All right, Ms. Friedman, what about that switch, that the presumption has switched from guilt to — or innocence to guilt?

JACLYN FRIEDMAN: Well, we don’t say that when we say that a kidnapper, when we ask a kidnapper, like, did you have permission to take them somewhere, right? So that doesn’t create presumption of guilt. So I don’t know see why it would be different in sexual assault.

That Friedman seems to think a "kidnapper" has the burden of proving his innocence is not just naive and absurd, it is frightening. She is a leading light among the feminists who dominate the public discourse on sexual assault.

The goal: legislation that requires colleges to always believe the woman

A few years ago, it would have been irresponsible, even laughable, to suggest that college men are presumed rapists solely on the basis of an accusation. Today, it is law in our two biggest states, not to mention the official policy of many colleges, and the sexual grievance cartel is attempting to make it the law in many states.

If history teaches us anything, we know two things: (1) the progressives who run the sexual grievance cartel never lose a battle, and (2) the sexual grievance cartel will continue to push for more and more legislation until the goal of "always believe the woman" is given statutory articulation across the nation.

If that sounds absurd remember that before April 11, 2011, hardly anyone would have believed that the Department of Education would issue a fiat demanding that colleges lower the standard of proof for sex offenses in all U.S. colleges to "preponderance of the evidence." The Dear Colleague letter issued that date was a shocking display of executive branch hubris and an affront to the presumption of innocence.

Most people assumed the debate from that point on would be over rolling back the Dear Colleague letter's excesses. But the sexual grievance cartel had other ideas. Working under the radar, as it is wont to do, it was busy taking the next step and flipping the burden of proof on its head. It got "affirmative consent" passed in California and New York and enshrined in student disciplinary handbooks in colleges across America.

On college campuses, the debate has taken the expected course: earnest students, ever eager to be perceived as having the correct views, march in lockstep to the PC group-think of their self-anointed moral superiors in the sexual grievance cartel. The outlandish lie that a rape epidemic is sweeping the academy is largely unchallenged, and anyone who seeks to instill balance in the discourse is shot down as a rape apologist.

Whatever happened to liberals?

"Liberalism . . . used to stand for due process of law, but not anymore," wrote Chris Powell, managing editor of the Journal Inquirer at Manchester, Connecticut, lamenting that the anti-due process bandwagon is about to ensnare Connecticut--its legislature is considering making "affirmative consent" the law for colleges in the state.

The "affirmative consent" standard is the easy, but not the appropriate, way to respond to the public outcry about sexual assault on campus. Innocence Project guru Mark A Godsey has said that "the risk of wrongful conviction is the highest when there’s public outcry. Most of the exonerations and wrongful convictions have occurred in rape cases."'

The problem is, the progressives leading the charge to enshrine "affirmative consent" into law don't give a damn about your son or the wrongly accused.

Friday, March 11, 2016

Tonight in Chicago, which has raised mindless violence to an art form in recent years, the angry left shut down a Donald Trump rally. Mr. Trump cancelled the rally because of skirmishes among protesters and Trump supporters--the police told Trump it wasn't safe to do the rally.

The protesters were largely the delicate snowflakes of the "safe space" generation who are accustomed to getting their way without accomplishment and for whom political correctness is simply correctness. They did what the left does routinely--they censored speech by silencing someone they don't like.

They picked the wrong person to silence this time. Nothing will energize Middle America to rally around Donald Trump more than the ugly scene last night. People are tired of their moral superiors on the left reducing them to vile caricature and telling them they aren't allowed to have views that don't meet the politically correct litmus test of some far left group. What we saw tonight was a microcosm for the very reason Trump is so popular.

Because the left has become an army of bullies, and Americans are sick to death of it.

There was a time, decades ago, when the political left was a movement that defended personal and political liberties. They took pains to argue and persuade that their positions were superior.

No more. The left has become the establishment. They are everywhere, they never rest and there is no escaping their efforts to make all of us over in their image. They are the 'omnipotent moral busybodies' C.S. Lewis warned of.

Worse, they have become so enamored with themselves and so convinced of their inherent moral superiority that it no longer matters whether their positions are demonstrably factually false. Consider what the left now defends with no sense of irony:

*Curtailing freedom of speech and the press on college campuses in the name of "safe spaces"

*Denying due process in the name of "justice" to people accused of sexual assault.

. . . .

But it is not enough for the left, which is on a permanent rampage against aspects of American culture that were once considered admirable and praiseworthy. Police officers are violent racists, stay-at-home moms anti-feminist sellouts, two-parent families a vestige of patriarchal oppression, hard-working entrepreneurs and successful business owners swept up in indiscriminate accusations of being in "the 1 percent."

Americans are fed up. We cannot defend the safety and privacy of our bathrooms, our businesses or our borders.

The United States was set up as a Republic to avoid the tyranny of the majority. What we have now is a tyranny of the minority — a relatively small cabal of academics, media personalities and elected Democrats who have a stranglehold on the national conversation.

This isn't tolerance. It isn't "choice."

Into the ring steps Donald Trump. He says he is willing to do what elected Republicans have not done. Americans have taken enough punches. They want someone who will punch back.

The nitwits on the left might have done something a hell of a lot of prominent Republicans have been trying to prevent: it's quite possible they've just handed Donald Trump the GOP nomination, and possibly the White House.

And they've also done something I would not have thought imaginable: they've made Donald Trump a sympathetic figure.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Washington Post reporter John Woodrow Cox announced online that an upcoming story for the Post next week will center around a Marine Major who was acquitted of sexual assault allegations against two midshipmen with whom he supposedly had a threesome: At his court-martial, a jury acquitted him of the sexual assault charge but convicted him of five lesser crimes. A year later, amid intense pressure on the military to address sexual misconduct, something remarkable happened: Another group of military officers concluded that he should never have been found guilty in the first place.Maj Thompson was not dismissed (equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for officers) at his Court-martial, so it sounds like the Marine Corps might have initiated a Board of Inquiry to separate him from the military on the offenses for which he was convicted. And, it sounds like he fought the charges at the Board of Inquiry who was able to determine that he should have never been found guilty in the first place. Of course, no media outlet reported about a possible wrongful conviction for two years, so kudos to John W. Cox for putting a spotlight on the injustice of this conviction.For anyone interested in how military justice is overtaking military intelligence in the oxymoron category, this story will be a must read. For anyone interested in how one could become a Here is a link to one of the many previous stories about his conviction.

Washington Post reporter John Woodrow Cox reports on Marine who insisted that he was wrongfully convicted, then had the conviction deemed wrongful by a Board of Inquiry. Through an interesting twist, it appears there was more to the story.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

According to police in Parsons, Tennessee, a man was beaten by a gang of thugs, sodomized with a tree branch, and left for dead out in the woods by four men. One of the thugs was the father of the victim's girlfriend who told her dad that the victim beat her. The police report that the girl's allegation was false.

Watch the horrible story here. Apparently, the victim lived in Mississippi, and his girlfriend called him and requested that he drive to Tennessee to come get her because she hated the town of Parsons. He met her at the Sonic and was approached by the thugs. He attempted to drive away, but they chased him until he ran off the road. Defenseless and not knowing where he was, he attempted to run into the woods on foot where the cowards caught him and committed the most atrocious acts which left him disfigured.

False accusations made to law enforcement are common as evidenced by all the stories in the news about those who have been wrongfully arrested, prosecuted, and sometimes wrongfully convicted based on false allegations. But, I would imagine that false allegations made to ordinary citizens are even more common.

One of my twelve tips for avoiding a false allegation was probably applicable in this case. If you meet a woman who complains that she has been abused by all of her ex-boyfriends and husbands, then I strongly discourage entering into or continuing a relationship with her. She could be lying, and when you break up with her, she will tell her next boyfriend or her father that you abused her. Heck, you could wind up like the poor guy in this story. Of course, she could always be telling the truth, but the thought in the back of your mind should be, "What is she doing that results in her being abused?" One thing is for sure, a relationship with her will most likely be a roller coaster one way or the other.

And, when the relationship ends, she might falsely accuse you of physically or sexually abusing her. If that shoe drops, then it is imperative that you consult with an attorney who should begin an investigation into her past relationships. I've heard in training that most men don't rape, but the ones who do are serial rapists. Whether that is true or not is debatable. My experience has led me to form the opinion that when a woman falsely accuses a man of abusing her, then there almost always will be other men who she has falsely accused. You must find them in order to show a pattern of false allegations, and they are typically easy to find because she will have told you about them.

Monday, March 7, 2016

I was amused when I accidentally tuned in for a portion of the Democrat Party's presidential debate this past weekend. Hillary Clinton was in her screeching mode, yelling as if she was talking to someone within ten feet of a jackhammer.That's not sexist, it's a fact.

Why is it okay for Clinton to rudely interrupt Sanders but it's not okay for Sanders to chide her for doing it? After all, last week, when Donald Trump did much worse to Senator Ted Cruz, Cruz deflated him by urging him to "breathe, Donald, breathe," and to "count to ten, Donald."

But, you see, it's a problem when it's done to Hillary Clinton--because the sexual grievance industry and its media enablers say it's a problem. In a word, it's sexist. This, according to that bastion of fairness, NPR:

Historically, male politicians have had to walk a fine line in coming across as too aggressive against female politicians — and if Clinton is the nominee, it's an issue Republicans will have to find a way to handle as well. While this hasn't been a big problem for Sanders before, it was clear Clinton was getting under his skin on issues he's very passionate about. And it's a moment you can expect to see again, more than likely.

Transmogrifying non-sexist, innocuous conduct into a sexual grievance is something the sexual grievance industry and its media enablers are paid to do. College administrators kowtow to their tyranny, but the rest of us in the vast Middle America know it's bullshit.

They remind me of the New York Magazine reporter who interviewed the undeniably brilliant Justice Antonin Scalia a few years ago. When Scalia opened up about his deep religious beliefs, the reporter was aghast. Scalia responded with this: "You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? . . . . You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil!"

Same with the Bernie Sanders incident. The people who supposedly took offense at Bernie's "tone" are so far outside the mainstream, they have no clue how ridiculous they sound. No sane and rational person thinks what Bernie Sanders did was sexist.

Last August, in a Republican party debate, Fox News' Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump about a series of comments he'd made about women. The question was intended to destroy him, once and for all. Kelly and Fox News misread the mood of the American people. Trump responded:

I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.

And frankly, what I say, and oftentimes it’s fun, it’s kidding. We have a good time. What I say is what I say. And honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn’t do that.

Trump's response was met with an ovation that still resonates. Political correctness is one of the things his legion of supporters--men and women, educated and uneducated, Republican and Democrat--are fed up with.

I am not a Trump supporter, but I would pay to see him debate Clinton this fall.

If they need a "safe zone" because of Bernie's "offensive" tone to Clinton this past debate, they will jump off a cliff when The Donald gets through with her.

Friday, March 4, 2016

Major Mason Weiss has written an article that is a must read for anyone who has been following the injustices bestowed on college students' due process rights, Senators Claire McCaskill and Kirsten Gillibrand, and documentaries produced and/or directed by Amy Zierning and Kirby Dick. Before the Dear Colleague letter, those forces were working to change the UCMJ.

MAJ Weiss is a military justice instructor at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, which is the home of Army Law Enforcement Training. He is training future sexual assault investigators on how they are to conduct sexual assault investigations, and his article shares his frustrations with how difficult it is to defend Servicemembers against false allegations of sexual assault.

MAJ Weiss's article highlights the evolution of the UCMJ, Article 120, an all encompassing sexual misconduct statute. Since 2008, Congress has chipped away at the due process protections afforded Servicemembers who have been accused of sexual assault and seems to change the UCMJ every two or three years.

MAJ Weiss is a courageous Army JAG Officer for writing this article, as it is not politically welcomed to criticize those who have implemented these changes or take actions that are not in lockstep with the narrative that all victims tell the truth, sometimes panels that are hand selected by the Commanding General make the wrong call, or innocent Servicemembers are being prosecuted, and sometimes convicted, at Courts-martial for offenses that would never see the inside of a civilian courtroom. This article is a good synopsis of what Army Trial Defense Counsel go through day in and day out defending those who defend America who have been wrongly accused.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that the Military Law Review or Army Lawyer will publish this article due to political reasons.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

The associate dean of students and deputy Title IX coordinator, Jason Casares, resigned last week from Indiana University at Bloomington. Casares had been accused of sexual assault in an open letter earlier this month by the president-elect of the Association for Student Conduct Administration, a position he once held. Casares' lawyer denies the charges.

An independent investigation ordered by ASCA found Casares not responsible for sexually assaulting fellow ASCA board member Jill Creighton, who had been elected president of the group for the 2016-2017 term.

Despite the finding, Casares' reputation has been destroyed. How could anyone making a sexual assault accusation want to confide in someone who had himself been accused of sexual assault?. . . .

Casares received more due process than he and his colleagues lobby for when it comes to students accused of sexual assault. While it would be easy to point and laugh like the "Simpson"'s character Nelson Muntz, one has to recognize that Casares just went through what hundreds of colleges students have experienced.

It is scary that an accusation without evidence, nor criminal charges, is all it takes to encourage the resignation of the accused. Should evidence be presented indicating guilt, then the guy deserves to live in a prison cell. Should no evidence, or charges, ever come forward then the woman should become a pariah....but that won't happen because a person would never lie about this type of situation.

"IrishCC" responded to Mr. Colorado's comment by echoing the mantras that, ironically, Title IX coordinators have long spewed:

The stats on false reports indicating that it happens less than 2% of the time, and for exactly the reasons indicated by your comment - no one believes the women. I've heard the administration had been ignoring problems with him for a while, so it's not surprising it took an outsider to force a change.

We responded to Irish CC--and found ourselves in the unusual position of defending someone who has worked for the sexual grievance industry. The fact is, we often defend people who do things we don't like, and Irish CC's comment was anathema to everything we work for at COTWA:

Your comment suggests that it is appropriate to discern the facts of one case based on what supposedly happened in others. The error, and the injustice, in this epiphany is self-evident. This is the sort of justification dictators have used to dispense with due process for eons. Beyond that, the 2% figure you've parroted is an invention of the sexual grievance industry that is used in an attempt to legitimize the very injustice you promote. The fact is, when sexual assault claims are subjected to scrutiny and competing evidence of innocence (that is, when the claims are actually examined), the majority can't be said to be either assaults or non-assaults. While there are relatively few claims that are conclusively false, there are also relatively few claims that are conclusively sexual assault. Your comment is a symptom of the rape culture hysteria that has become a cottage industry on campus. We are feeding our daughters falsehoods such as the one you posit, and this is the result: the recent highly touted Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed that a figure approaching half of college women think that when a woman gives a guy a "nod in agreement," that isn't enough for consent. That is chilling.